Related Links

Solar-Tectic LLC has been granted a world-wide exclusive license for a method of manufacturing single crystal silicon (cSi) thin-films on ordinary glass over a large area, thus allowing for the commercialization of single crystal silicon thin-film solar cells for the first time.

The invention came out of a Dartmouth Sponsored Research Agreement with Solar-Tectic, initially inspired by a related technology disclosed by the late Dr. Praveen Chaudhari, renowned materials scientist and winner of the National Medal of Technology.

Dartmouth researchers at Thayer School of Engineering invented this break-through technology, which allows single-crystal thin-films (composed of Si, Ge, GaAs, CdTe, CIGS, etc) to be monolithically fabricated on large-area amorphous substrates such as ordinary glass and at a cost that is orders of magnitude lower than the price of manufacturing crystalline silicon solar cells (or c-Si).